William Donald Bradford (born June 19, 1944) is an American economist who is Professor Emeritus of Finance and former Dean of the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington.
He is a former president of the National Economic Association[1] and was inducted into the Minority Business Hall of Fame in 2013.
He moved from Gadsden, Alabama to Cleveland, Ohio as a young child, where he attended East Technical High School and earned money for college by working as a barber in his father's shop.
He earned an MBA in 1968 and a PhD in finance in 1971 from the Ohio State University.
[3] Bradford was an associate professor of finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1972 to 1980, and chaired the Finance Department and then served as Associate Dean in the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park from 1984 - 1994.